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Legal and policy responses to COVID-19 rest on and express the balance of different basic values and principles. Earlier and current regulatory approaches bring into sharp relief how liberty must be understood and weighed against other values. This is for the sake of liberty itself, but crucially too for other compelling aspects of social justice.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of five new members of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has published a new policy briefing. It setting out the key ethical considerations relevant to public health measures being introduced to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.

During this time, we are continuing with our programme of work as much as we’re able, while recognising that we may need to adapt as the situation changes.

We – jointly with the French and German ethics councils – call on governments and stakeholders around the world to put ethical considerations at the core of any future discussion and of the development of global governance of heritable genome editing.

A brief analysis of what the Government is doing now to contain COVID-19, the possible restrictive measures that they might take to prevent and control the spread, why these might be justified, and why it is important that the Government sets out publicly – and early – the case for implementing such restrictive approaches.

So what relevance has our report to the enormous challenges being posed to health systems and governments the world over by COVID-19? Unsurprisingly, quite a lot.

The Government has announced its intention to introduce new safety measures for the use of medical devices, through its Medicines and Medical Devices Bill.

We have put together a short guide to some of the main ethical questions around surveillance and quarantine for infectious diseases, based on the findings of our 2007 inquiry ‘public health: ethical issues’.